According to Neil Black, the British Athletics performance director, Christine Ohuruogu has made her best ever start to a summer track season because she has found a joyous spring in her step. "She just seems to be happy in her life and that happiness and contentment is coming across very strongly," Black ventured, on a visit to Tyneside ahead of the European Team Championships at Gateshead on 22 and 23 June.The assessment was noted with a fit of the giggles by Ohuruogu. "That is funny," the former world and Olympic 400 metre champion said, after regaining her composure. "So I was miserable before, then?"Not so much full of misery, exactly, as wound up by the pressures of preparing for what was, for the Stratford woman, a backyard Olympic Games. It started the minute the East Ender struck Commonwealth gold in Melbourne in 2006. The first question put to her in the MCG was about carrying the home hopes as a local girl towards London 2012. It was a question she could not run away from for six years, through the highs of World Championship and Olympic golds in 2007 and 2008 and the lows of three injury-plagued years that followed.
Having emerged from 2012 with a home Olympic 400m silver, Ohuruogu has started 2013 like a woman with a burden lifted. A notoriously slow starter, she has opened her season with clockings of 50.58sec for second place at the Jamaica Invitational and 50.53sec for third spot at the opening Diamond League meeting in Doha."I think for a lot of British athletes, 2012 was the hardest thing we'll ever go through," the linguistics graduate reflected. "It always hovered like this cloud and you were never quite sure how you were going to come out of the end of it. You could imagine – maybe I'll do all right, maybe I won't – but until it had gone you could not actually breathe and say, 'Oh, the sun still rises; life still goes on.' I think, for a lot of athletes, no matter how they did, it's nice to come out of the other end and say, 'Yeah, there is life after 2012.' It is a relief, almost."Ohuruogu turns 29 on Friday. For all that she has accomplished in life, on and off the track, there are new chapters yet to be written.
Amid all the fuss about the home Games, it passed without much notice that she became an author in 2012. She had two children's books published – Camp Gold: Running Stars and Camp Gold: Going for Gold. They tell the tale of Maxine, a schoolgirl who suddenly discovers a talent for running and sets out on a path towards Olympic gold."Yeah, I do have two books out there," Ohuruogu said. "I couldn't really do much to publicise them in the run-up to the Games because the focus was just so intense. Then, after the Games, I didn't want people to go out and buy them just because my name was on them and I'd won silver. I wanted people to buy them because they really wanted their kids to read them. I didn't want to use it as a gimmick just to drum up publicity."I really enjoyed writing them. I wanted to focus on getting young girls doing sport. I got in a bit about how I grew up and put a bit of adventure in. Writing for children is really hard but it's really rewarding. I'd love to do it again in the future."
The immediate future for the J K Rowling of the track is a Diamond League date in New York on 25 May, followed by the European Team Championships on Tyneside next month. Britain has twice won the European Cup at Gateshead, but that was when it was split into a men's and women's competition, the male squad triumphing in 1989 and 2000. Since the merger in 2009, there has been no sniff of a GB success but hopes are high of the combined class of 2013 mounting a strong challenge to the favoured Russians in front of what promises to be sell-out home crowd.A winning contribution by Ohuruogu would be a step in the right direction. Only two British women have ever won the 400m in the European Cup or European Team Championships: Lillian Board in 1967 and Mel Neef in 1995.MN2S is an international booking agency and label services provider. We connect artists, DJs, celebrities and record labels to audiences and opportunities around the world. A global company – organising tours, bookings and events in over 100 countries
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The biggest call for the British Athletics performance director, Neil Black, who heads the selection panel, will be over the final place for the women’s 400m. Emily Diamond and Seren Bundy-Davies are there by right, having finished first and second in the British trials, but selectors have a fiendishly difficult decision to make between Ohuruogu and Anyika Onuora. The 31-year-old Onuora made a compelling case on Friday when beating Ohuruogu to the bronze medal at the European Championships in Amsterdam. As she told the Observer: “I came here to do a job and I’ve done it. I know what was on the line, literally, and I’m not going to shy away from the truth. This is our reality. I’d like to think that I’ve got my place but let’s see what happens.” As Onuora pointed out she has the better form in 2016, having also finished fourth and fifth in two Diamond League races. Her training partner Martyn Rooney, who took men’s 400m gold in Amsterdam, also believes she is good enough to reduce her personal best of 50.87 to below 50 seconds, which would put her in contention for a medal in Rio.
“That is what I have been working towards,” Onuora said. “Also the 400m is new to me. This is my second year of doing the event. I can do a lot more in the rest of 2016.” Ohuruogu, though, has unmatched pedigree. The 32-year-old possesses two world championship gold medals from 2007 and 2013, as well as having an Olympic title from 2008 and a silver medal from 2012. And Ohuruogu believes she will again peak when it matters. “In 2007 I had one race for the world championships before winning gold,” she said. “It shows I can do it. I have a month to prepare for Rio and I’m over the slump I had earlier in the season. I feel a lot better.” Ohuruogu had three races in Amsterdam compared with Onuora’s two, leaving her tired for the final. She also improved at a rate of knots to make the world championship final in Beijing last year. As she put it: “The 400m is a hard race to judge and peaking is always a delicate balance of timing. I am relying on the selectors and their understanding of that.”
It will be close but expect Ohuruogu to get the nod, with Onuora having the consolation of a prime place in the 4x400m relay team. Many of the decisions for the selectors appear more straightforward. In the 100m CJ Ujah will get the third place alongside James Dasaolu and James Ellington. The hugely talented Desiree Henry should be picked for the women’s 100m despite buckling over with cramp in the European Championships final. And in the men’s 200m Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, who has run sub-20 this season, will surely get the nod over Zharnel Hughes, who has struggled with injuries, for the final place. The indications are Pavey will also earn a dramatic late call-up after finishing fifth in the 10,000m European Championships final on Wednesday night. Her chances of making it to Rio had appeared to be slipping when she finished well down the field at the British trials in May while suffering from a serious chest infection and then struggled to return to top form. Pavey’s time of 31min 34.61sec in Amsterdam was not only inside the Olympic qualifying standard by more than 40 seconds but was also seven seconds quicker than Kate Avery, who chose to miss the European Championships after finishing third in the UK trials, has ever run.